It is a bit of paradox that community colleges are, in theory, what every talking head and commentator are asking colleges to be—direct, cheap, no frill, about the education only—and yet there is no other college type that is seeing a more precipitous enrollment drop off than community colleges and technical schools.<p>The answer, and no one likes this, is what people say they want and what they actually want as voted by where they enroll are often two different things.
When I decided to go to grad school in Econ I had to take all the math classes I didn’t take during my undergrad years. Community college was the obvious choice. I had 2 really good professors and one hack. This was from 2002-2005.<p>I also tried to take a “fun” class each time I took a math class just to break up the grind. Creative writing was an eye opener. Most of the stuff turned in was dreadful, sometimes in style/substance but especially in effort. Short stories meant 2 paragraphs for a lot of them. The final story of the semester was supposed to be the culmination of the class. I turned in a 7 page story. While several people were enthusiastic about reading it for critique most were not. One guy even told me, “I’m sure it’s good but dude, I’m never going to reading anything that long.”<p>I asked the prof about the lack of effort and awful results from the class. I was in a BFA program in film and photography for undergrad and the critique sessions were intense. Part of what drove us, me at least, was fear of embarrassing myself in front of everyone with lousy work. This creative writing class was an elective and presumably the people that signed up for it should have been at least interested in the topic.<p>She said that you have to understand that most of the people there were really pushing themselves to be at college at all. Most had never developed successful academic habits or understood what it takes to seriously engage with a topic. “That’s why they are at community college instead of a 4 year school” was left unsaid but was clearly implied.<p>I’m of the opinion that marginal students, either in skill or interest, are more likely to just not try college at all these days instead of wasting their money and time. That’s actually a good thing IMO.
>“You need help with your classes and financial aid? Well, here, take a number and run from office to office and see if you can figure it out.”<p>>“I’ve had to go out of my way to find people, and if they didn’t know the answer, they would send me to somebody else, usually by email.” Hearing back from the financial aid office, she said, can take a month.<p>State schools are like this too.
College faculty offices, both in community college and in university, are some of the most inept people I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with. Financial aid, admissions, counseling, all of them. That alone is enough to drive you mad then add on top the other stress of being a student and it's no wonder people are just saying no thanks.
My wife briefly (a couple of semesters) tried to go through a software development curriculum at our community college, which is apparently decently funded as community colleges go.<p>Having gone through a 4-year Bachelor's in Computer Engineering at an ABET accredited university, the community college program was pathetic by comparison. There was one professor who seemed to have his shit together and worth the money. The rest were clearly half-assing it, assignments were poorly explained, grading was ludicrously pedantic (red marks for number of spaces on indentations in hand-written HTML), and the curriculum didn't structure prerequisites adequately so if you didn't know any better you'd be learning how to use a command line for the first time while someone is trying to teach you about RLC circuits with Arduino. It was quite bizarre, and they were clearly mostly dealing with the dregs who couldn't make it in a more serious university or in industry.<p>I guess I can't blame them, I can't imagine a community college teaching position pays all that well. But the only reason to go through that program is to do the bare minimum required for 2 years to trade up to a superior four year program at a major university, and you'll probably have to do a lot of remedial work when you get there.
I remember when I first started out on my college academic path I tried a semester at a community collage. I don't recall the name of the class but it was something to do with computers. I figured start off with something I'm already good at and see what I get out of the experience.<p>It became apparent very early that I was much more advanced than the instructor. So much so that I realized this person was woefully unqualified to teach anyone anything about "computers". I remember the day when he looked at me and out of earshot of the other students said something to the effect of "Don't tell anyone OK?".<p>My next semester I made sure was at a proper four year college for CompSci.<p>I don't look back unkindly at my experience as a whole for that community college, it just makes some of the issues in the OP article ring true. Smart people will know the quality of education they're receiving especially when they're having to pay for it.
I had a wonderful time at community college! (It helps that my community college had an amazing service department).<p>Even for people who don't finish a degree, it's still a great place to get exposure or make connections. And it's much cheaper to find out college isn't for you at community college.<p>Transfer programs though are a mess. The culprit are the 4-year universities - who actually <i>punish</i> you for not coming directly from high school. Your application is deprioritized, the requirements are much more stringent, and no one is there to help you.
Universities are about a few things:<p>1. Education - Inspiration and job training
2. High-achieving peer groups
3. Prestige and signalling
4. Fun and independence<p>Online courses do #1 better than CCs. Dorms are essential to #4, so CCs miss out on it. There is no prestige associated with CCs and the titular community isn't especially high achieving.<p>What value do CCs provide ?
Some may not like this opionion but...<p>I have worked at a community college. In my experience, the majority of the degrees or certificates emparted by said college do not really carry any marketable skills. Instructors are older, for the most part and not computer literate. Covid-19 forced a great number of them to either retire early or killed them off. Departments are always fighting the state for a small piece of the budget to stay afloat and not cut staff. I've found that most instructors are only there for their paychecks.<p>A good indicator of how bad things have gotten is the fact that post-secondary schools like community colleges and private schools regularly send out department reps to perform outreach at high-schools just to increase their enrollment numbers. A young mind's brain is very malleable afterall.
I have been doing some research on vocations and community college courses in USA. It’s hell. Most of them don’t make their curriculum
easily accessible. They don’t show the price. They treat visitors like some sort of corporate funnel where they take personal information up front like contact info etc and then say “they'll get back to you later”. As a potential international (Canadian) student, I haven’t heard back yet. This is terrible experience. Contrast this to Canadian colleges like Centennial, Humber, Conestoga, etc. Their websites are clear and easy to navigate, you can find the curriculum you’ll be studying and the price you’ll be paying with no sales funnel wall. I don’t get it. Why is USA education system such a joke?
Quality of education was the real issue for my son compared to when I attended the same school.<p>I was taught by local business leaders and real human instructors while he was 'guided' through many online sessions using computer-based curriculum. This strategic change dramatically lowered his interactive learning opportunities and made success very difficult. Frankly, it was the one of the most disappointing thing I had ever seen.<p>Ultimately, he gave up and switched to a technical school and moved on with his life rather than dig a mountain of debt for nothing.<p>People vote with their dollars and their feet.
Great topic. Lots of mixed feelings. This thread is becoming generally negative on community colleges (CCs) so I will balance it out with my overwhelmingly positive experience.<p>Graduated HS in 2007. Was not ambitious in HS whatsoever. Soon after graduating I realized I needed to get my shit together. Education was the best bet at that time. My grandpa was a CC guidance counselor so the CC path was acceptable and familiar in my family. I never actually got much formal guidance counseling from him by the way. The first semester was disorienting but isn't all big change in life? I got much more confident that I could transfer once I discovered IGETC [1]. Every CC class was clearly marked to show what IGETC area it fulfilled. The UCs even provide statistics on the transfer admission rate for each major. My family was poor on paper so I got a lot of financial support. $5K to $10K per year in grants. I actually had $2K in savings purely from grants by the time I transferred to Cal! I chuckle a bit at UC kids taking on $50K in debt for lower-level general education whereas I ended up getting paid $2K to do the same! I transferred on-time, in 2 years. I pretty much had to devote my time to studies, though. It was very lonely. Continuing to live with my mom sucked. I regret not finding ways to socialize productively more during CC. But you can totally find concentrations of ambitious, high-performing peers. The advanced STEM classes had a lot of serious academics for example. I met some sharp people working on the school newspaper who probably went on to significant success in life. The professors were high-quality in general. Most had graduated from Stanford or UCs (colleges in the University of California system) themselves. They were totally focused on teaching us rather than doing research like most UC professors. When you get to CC it's really clear right away that a lot of students will not transfer even though that is their stated goal. Some just have too much life responsibility: needing to balance studies with full-time work to support a family and pay bills, etc. That is a tragedy. There were quite a few spoiled kids who probably subconsciously knew they would never really need to make a big career for themselves and weren't motivated for reasons like that. There were a lot of peers who unfortunately just had bad mindsets about education. You could tell that they didn't accept they needed to start being uncool and start reading a lot of books. There were a lot of peers who unfortunately were probably just bewildered by the bureaucracy of schools and just couldn't figure out the system and weren't being encouraged to persist at their studies. A lot of the students who don't transfer or get a degree as intended are up against some combination of those factors. Some of those problems are solvable by CCs. Others are deep-rooted and I don't think it's reasonable to expect CCs to fix them. Maybe we should just set the expectation that a lot of CC students won't transfer or get a degree simply because they are catering to "at-risk" populations. All-in-all CC was a smashing success for me in terms of sparking my passion for learning and providing an affordable foundation for career success.<p>[1] <a href="https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/admission-requirements/transfer-requirements/preparing-to-transfer/general-education-igetc/igetc/" rel="nofollow">https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/admission-requi...</a>
The paintball wars can be brutal.<p>In all seriousness, the comments in this thread make me wonder if the show "Community" wasn't as much commentary as it was comedy.